33,000 Views

While not generating millions of hits like videos of cats showering in a sink or dancing babies, this year’s cycling video project did pretty darned well considering it started as “just an experiment,” and the fact that I have no video training (though maybe I should get some…)

As of today, the cycling videos for this season have gotten about 32,800 views.

One of my goals with that series was to make it a community project, and I’m glad so many riders and racers were willing to help by riding with a handlebar or saddle cam–which in turn enabled us all to see what it might be like to be riding with riders way beyond our abilities. Based on questions from some of the folks I met this season, I know there is some interest in the cameras and equipment I used this year.

The helmet cams I use are made by Seattle-based VholdR. This season I was using the 1st generation ContourHD and found that the frame rate for the HD setting (30 fps) wasn’t fast enough for high speed cycling action, so what you saw on the later videos was SD at 60 fps.

To address this kind of issue, VholdR now has a camera that can capture 1080p video (the ContourHD1080p) with lots of adjustment options. It has four HD settings (1080p, 960p, and two at 720p), two frame rates (30fps and 60fps), and four configurable settings (metering, contrast, exposure, and microphone gain). The new ContourHD1080p has an “Action HD” setting 720p (1280×720) at 60fps, which should give great results for high speed action like cycling.

Early on I experimented with the ContourHD mounted on a helmet, but the perspective isn’t quite right, and eventually settled on using the handlebar mount supplied by VholdR, and a saddle mount consisting of some high density foam stuffed into a micro saddle bag. I think the combination of 3 cameras–handlebar, saddle, and hand-held–produced enough different perspectives to keep things interesting.

The saddle mount consisted of some high-density foam stuffed into a micro saddle bag to cushion the camera. This saddle bag has a zipper that runs along the mid-line of the bag, which works well for aligning the camera.

If you try to do a saddle mount like this, I’d recommend overkill on securing the camera into the saddle bag–we wrapped an oversized ski strap around the whole thing, and sometimes duct-taped the whole thing together. I got lax about this at the end of the season and the camera dropped out of the bag one time it was attached to Adrian Hegyvary at Seward, and I completely lost a camera during a ride in Northern Illinois. That was an expensive mistake!!

The handheld shots were taken with a Kodak Zi6, which won out over the Flip Mino because it has removable batteries–so I can be sure I have enough power to shoot as long as possible. Kodak now has a Zi8 with more features, but I’m not sure any of them would would be better than the Zi6 for capturing fast cyclists or skiers.

This year I focused on Seward because just as David Douglas described, it’s a perfect workout–and even on days I wasn’t feeling up to joining a race, the location is convenient for me. I think the video we got at the Marymoor Velodrome was amazing, but…getting over there is a project unto itself. So, we’ll see what next year holds for video venues.

Email me if you are interested in contributing next year.

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